Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops

Spring Session 2009

Develop your writing with the mentorship of an acclaimed professional writer and feedback from your peers.

Workshops take place at the QWF office, Suite 3, Atwater Library unless otherwise indicated.

SHORT FICTION: 4 WINDOWS AND A DOOR

Eight Thursdays, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (March 5–April 30; no meeting April 9)

1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Peter Dubé

The short story is one of the most slippery of literary forms; just as a bare room can become a bedroom, a study, or a dining room, so can the term "short fiction" apply to a multitude of different kinds of texts.

Great short stories have taken shapes that range from a paranoid internal monologue to a fast-paced, plot-driven thriller; they have been as short as a message on a post-card and as leisurely as a fifty-page account of a decades-long marriage. Not surprisingly, this open-endedness is both an enormous strength, and a demanding challenge, for writers because whatever form it takes, in order to succeed, a story must engage a reader. So, to return to our analogy, if a story like a room can be decorated any way you like and used for just about anything, it's just wasted space if it isn't being used at all. And most of us want a doorway in and a few windows through which to see the world.

This workshop will explore the possibilities of the short story by looking at some of its basic building blocks: character, setting, point of view, plot points and so on. A mix of readings, writing exercises and in-class discussion of participants' work, the workshop will be fairly practical and focus on looking at how stories operate in specific and concrete ways so as to provide us all with a better understanding of its form(s) and enhance our ability to make the most of those many—and rich—possibilities.

As this is a workshop, participants will be expected to actively participate in discussions and to present work for review in a timely manner. Any participant who has work ready to be looked at is definitely encouraged to bring it to the first session.

Peter Dubé is a Montreal-based novelist, short story writer, essayist and cultural critic. He is the author of the novel Hovering World (DC Books 2002), a collection of linked short stories, At the Bottom of the Sky, (DC Books, 2007), and the editor of the anthology Madder Love (Rebel Satori Press, 2008). Dubé also sits on the editorial board of the visual arts magazine, Espace Sculpture, and is a contributing editor for Ashé Journal.

back